UNREAL REALITIES

Chapter 2: Making a Decision

DISCLAIMER - I don't own anything you recognise. If i did, i would be sitting on a beach in Miami right now, instead of getting ready to go back to uni in cold windy Scotland.

"Wait, I think she's waking up."

"Well, don't crowd her."

"I'm not crowding her."

"You are, look at you, take a step back, give her some air."

"You take a step back, you're closer than I am."

"Ron…"

"Harry, just leave it, she's almost awake. Hermione? Hermione, can you hear me?"

Hermione groaned as the voices disturbed her sleep. Opening her eyes slowly, she stared up at the red hair and the emerald eyes of the two boys she knew so well.

"Ron?" She croaked out, "You're not dead, you're still here." She smiled sadly.

All of a sudden, the events from the last time she had woken up flooded through her mind.

"You are here aren't you?" She sat up in bed, grateful that she wasn't bound to it this time. Reaching out an arm she laid her hand on his face, feeling the warmth of his skin and, laughing she pulled him towards her, into a hug.

"Hey!" Harry interrupted, feigning indignance, "I know I'm not your boyfriend but a 'hello' would be nice!"

"Sorry Harry," she released Ron, who looked like he would kill Harry for interrupting, just as soon as he could keep his excitement at her hug contained, and drew Harry into a hug too.

"You will not believe the nightmare I just had, Snape was there, and so was my mum…" She trailed off, the smile fading from her face at the mention of her mother. If she was back to reality then that meant her mother was…

"Harry? Ron? Please tell me, are my parents ok?"

The two boys looked at the ground, their faces telling her more than any words ever could.

"No." She sank back on the bed, "no, it's not true."

"Hermione," Harry began awkwardly, "I'm so sorry, I don't know how to tell you, but after Voldemort killed your mum and hit you with that spell, the Death Eaters killed your father before I could get to them. I'm so sorry."

Ron just stood staring at the floor, his eyes burning for the pain he couldn't stop her feeling.

"No, I've just been talking to my mum, she just touched my face. I was talking to her! I was in the hospital and Doctor Snape said…he told me…he told me that you weren't real. I was getting better. I was getting better and then I woke up here." Her voice was a shriek, her two friends were slowly backing away from the bed as she got louder and louder, before Madam Pomfrey came rushing in to the room.

"Really. If you continue to upset her like this, then I'm afraid I will not be able to allow you two to visit her again. She's been through a lot, poor lamb."

Shooing Ron and Harry away, she subdued Hermione long enough to administer her a potion.

Almost immediately, drowsiness overcame her and she sank back into the soft pillows of the bed.

Which one was real?

Once more, upon waking, Hermione had found herself bound to the bed in what Snape had referred to as 'an asylum'. After opening her eyes briefly, she'd shut them again before anyone had a chance to realise that she was awake. She needed some time to think.

Which reality was real?

There were so many memories she had, so many things that felt so real. How could she have made up Ron? The way his ears turned red when he was embarrassed, what his face looked like when he was anywhere near a spider, how gentle he was when he kissed her.

And that was just Ron. There were a million other things that she couldn't have invented. Harry, Voldemort, Hogwarts, the entire Weasley family, Quidditch, Hogsmeade visits, a million and one incantations and potions.

A solitary tear slid down her cheek. She remembered so many wonderful things, but was she really remembering them?

At the sound of footsteps, she finally opened her eyes, knowing that the tear on her face would give away the fact that she wasn't really asleep.

Her mother and Professor…Doctor…Snape were once more standing beside her.

"Twice in two days," Snape smiled down at her, a rare and scary sight, "this is certainly a very good sign."

"What do you mean?" Hermione whispered. She hadn't noticed before how hoarse her voice was, as though she hadn't used it much, except to scream.

"This is the second time that you have been lucid and able to carry on a conversation. Normally you can go months within your delusions, not noticing or recognising anyone in the room with you. That is why you are strapped to the bed, I'm afraid, you had a tendency to injure yourself and any others who attempted to enter the room. So we are extremely hopeful about a recovery now that you seem to be lucid more regularly than ever before."

"Hermione, darling. You can beat this thing, I know you can. You were always so strong. Please, you're all that I have left. I love you sweetheart." Her mother wasn't crying anymore, a fact that Hermione noticed with relief.

"The Doctors and I have been talking honey," her mother sat beside the bed as Snape exited the room, "and we feel that you're making very good progress. If you keep getting better then they'll let you come home with me. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Hermione ignored the slightly patronising tone in her mothers voice and thought about how it would feel to go home with her mother. To be able to talk to her, hug her, argue with her again, like she used to do, before Voldemort…killed her.

"But what about Hogwarts?" She asked, slightly apprehensively.

"Darling, there is no Hogwarts. There never was. Everything you thought you knew about that place was just a…a dream. You just got a bit confused, that's all, but now that you're getting better, you can come home with me. Don't you want that? Don't you want to come back with me? Stay in your old bedroom? Go shopping? We could stay up late watching old movies with popcorn and hot chocolate, like we used to do when your father was on night shift, before this mess began." She sounded wistful, "Don't you want that back? Our old life. Real life."

"But how do I know that this is real life, and that Hogwarts isn't?" She wasn't trying to hurt her mother, but she needed to know. She was getting more confused with every passing second. What her mother was saying sounded so appealing, she wanted all of it back, but that didn't change the fact that she was being told that the past five years of her life was a lie. Worse than a lie. A fantasy.

Her mother didn't say anything, she just reached over and hugged her daughter, planting a soft kiss on her forehead.

"You felt that, didn't you darling?" She asked, once she'd sat back.

Hermione nodded. She could still feel it. Feel her mothers gentle arms wrapped around her, as much as the bed would allow; her lips on her forehead. She could smell her mother's perfume, still lingering on her skin. The coconut smell of her silken hair.

"That's how you know, Mynee," her mother used the pet name she'd had for her ever since Hermione was three and had had trouble pronouncing her own name. "That's how you know that I'm real. Because I'm here and I'm not going to go away. I'm going to stay with you until you get better and then I'm taking you home, where you'll be safe and happy. Besides, there is no such thing as magic. You used to love fairy tales and stories about magic when you were a little girl, but I never dreamed that you would grow up to believe it was true."

"No such thing as magic?" The smell of her mothers perfume still clung to Hermione and she was slowly becoming lost in it, thinking about a future with her mother. Going to a normal school. Making normal friends. Not having to live in fear of a psychopathic murderer who wanted to kill her and everyone she knew.

"That's right sweetheart. There is no such thing as magic." Her mother seemed to sense a change in Hermione and walked sedately to the door to call for Dr. Snape, Hermione's eyes watching her.

Which was more difficult to believe: the thought that she'd been crazy for five years after witnessing something terrible; or the thought that she'd spent the past five years at Hogwarts, fighting off curses and dark creatures, fighting a battle which culminated in the murder of her parents before her eyes.

She had a choice. One parent or none.

She didn't give Dr. Snape a chance to say anything as he entered the room. "What do I have to do to get better?"

A smile lit up her mothers face and once more there was a flash of something indefinable in Snape's eyes.

"It's very simple Hermione. You merely have to eliminate the people who play the main parts in your fantasies." He looked down at his ever-present clipboard.

"That means that you have to kill Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Ginevra Weasley, and Ronald Weasley. And burn down Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

A/N - I'm depressed from my exams! Cheer me up! Leave me a review! Please )